An interview with Bill Viola, a paramount benchmark for those who use videos as the expressive medium of choice in contemporary art

American Bill Viola (born in 1951) is one of the major contemporary artists and a paramount benchmark for those who use videos as the expressive medium of choice in contemporary art.

Viola’s works are not merely aesthetically very powerful but are also dense in meaning whilst they do not resort to traditional narrative patterns. In Viola’s works, one can easily detect the influence of classic Renaissance and Oriental art alongside the spirituality that comes from Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism and from Christian Mysticism.

Music plays a pivotal role in Bill Viola’s works and so does the use of slow motion and futuristic technologies. The philosophical themes explored by the artist delve in universal human experiences like birth, death, the passing of time and consciousness. I interviewed Bill Viola in Florence at the presentation inside the ex-church of San Pier Scheraggio of his “Self Portrait, Submerged” 2013 which he donated to Amici degli Uffizi.

Viola is one of the artists I love the most and, perhaps, the one that had the biggest impact on my growing up; even now I can remember the emotions I felt upon seeing one of his works for the first time: an all pervading and deeply intimate – visceral in fact – experience. His works are “moving sound paintings”: you don’t just “see” them, the senses are so involved that you almost feel that you are part of the scene; the colours are so vivid and the resolution so incredible that you truly start to believe that the characters may come out from the screen at any moment.

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Viola’s art takes the viewer into a more human dimension made of slowness and awareness: every subtle variation has a role and meaning, no detail is expendable and, by observing silence, even the observer’s breath becomes deeper and, in turn, it eases the access to one’s more intimate self. I believe that a dedicated examination of one of Viola’s work, preferably repeated, is a cathartic and revealing experience, a form of self-therapy. A therapy that becomes more and more precious and necessary as the passing of time pushes us towards unawareness and alienation.

Philosopher Henri Bergson rejected the concept of time as a series of individual measurable instants, homogeneous and reversible, time as an entity that can be calculated and quantified because, he believed, such idea was totally inadequate to describe inner time – which is subjective and cannot be segmented – and depends only on the individual’s psychological conditions which vary all the time. Time as shown by the clock – mathematical time – is not human; it is not the time by which we “measure” the events of our life.

The time of life is, in fact, an immeasurable flow made of unique, once-off moments that add up; our conscience perceives time in terms of experiences and duration, in which each instant is shaped by the process that has brought it about and is, at the same time, the seed of something new to come. By breaking mathematical time – the one shown by the clock – the works of Bill Viola come closer to the singularity and specificity of the existence: they invite you to enter life.

Moreover, the use of slow motion gives body language its dignity and importance back and, as such, Viola’s works are an extraordinary study and similar, for their significance in the context of our times, to Eadweard Muybridge’s experiments on motion photography dating back to the late 1800. The body is much vilified in Western culture and yet it is a supreme vessel of communication and empathy.

In any case, the first question I ask Viola – just so as to dispel any doubt – is how to correctly pronounce his name; many are the variations, from “Vaiola” to “Viiola” and the likes and – to my great satisfaction – he confirms that his surname is pronounced exactly as the purple colour in Italian given that Bill has a little Italian blood in him (his family being originally from Pavia).

In 1973 Viola graduated from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, part of New York’s Syracuse University, and came in contact with video art during the early 70’s whilst working for artists like Bruce Nauman and Nam June Paik. 1977 marked the year in which artistic director Kira Perov invited him to exhibit his works at Melbourne’s Trobe University thereby becoming his inseparable true partner both in work – she is executive director of Bill Viola Studio – and in life.

Viola tells me that, aged 6, he fell into a lake and would have most likely drown if somebody didn’t step in and rescued him. However, he was not afraid to die: he let himself into the embrace of the water drifting deep without resisting whilst experiencing a profound sense of peace. He describes this experience as the start of his career, an event that had a profound impact, which continuously re-emerged in his dreams and in which one can detect many of the elements that would come to be a recurring feature of his works.

In 1980 Bill and Kira lived in Japan for a year and a half. There Viola studied Zen Buddhism with Master Daien Tanaka – an experience that would shape who he is forever. During the interview, I come to see how Oriental philosophy is so deeply part of the way he approaches life and art. Each day Viola spends at least twenty minutes meditating and everything he practices and what he believes in comes from oriental philosophy. “You have to train yourself to instinctively know how to do something, and I think that’s what’s necessary in art because in Western culture we tend to overthink… But in Japanese culture emptiness is priced” to which he adds “You look at the normal world as everybody and then, just every once in a while, you look at the backside. […] Is really important to have any kind of disturbance, is good for us, because if not it would be just boring” and “What I learned about the Japanese was that you shouldn’t finish anything, it’s a big mistake to finish something, because when you do, it’s over”.

Even when I ask him what advice he would give a young artist, his answer is permeated with wisdom: “When you have inspiration and creativity and then mystery, mystery is the most important one. And then there’s what we call in English the leap of faith, that’s another great one. So the leap of faith is that you’re with a group of people, and you’re walking along, and everything is fine, and then you reach a cliff… And then you look down there, and there’s water, and there’s crocodiles….but where you wanna go is just over there, so the leap of faith is 95 percent of the people will get to the edge and go “oh, sorry no, I can’t do that, I have to turn back”. But some crazy guy will come and just say oh, and just walk off the cliff – and that’s where all the great art happens: the ones who didn’t think about the cliff and just closed their eyes and walked. And then they create masterpieces, they create new ideas […] We think we have to know everything, to go to Universities, to have knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. But in a way, sometimes, not knowing something is really really important”.

I believe that another reason to Viola’s powerful art is the mastery with which he brings various language codes to co-exist where they would normally appear incompatible. He often let the individuals and settings that inhabited the Renaissance Western art to convey the teachings derived from Oriental philosophy, all via the use of cutting-edge technology. It seems he has succeeded in building several bridges – a time bridge that connects past, present and future, and a geographical and cultural one linking the various branches of knowledge. Viola’s works tap into our visual background whilst incorporating new suggestions, insights and meaning: they communicate on different levels of our conscience and know no cultural or geographical boundaries.

Viola’s video art has been shown in the most prestigious museums and institutions around the world since the early 70’s, the latest being a retrospective featuring a vast selection of works spanning from 1977 up to now which is now on display at the Grand Palais in Paris until 21st July.